Rex Ryan lights into Jets with Pats game looming

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FOXBORO — So Mount Rexuvius erupted. Or as New York Post columnist Steve Serby described it: a “Rexplosion that shook the walls inside the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center.’’

Maybe that’s one time you wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall. This couldn’t have been pretty. Jets coach Rex Ryan reportedly pulled a nutty on Gang Green on Monday.

And really, if you think about it, this makes perfect sense.

Ryan can’t be too happy that his bullies are being beaten up. He can’t be too thrilled that both the Raiders and Ravens knocked his boys all over the lot the past two Sundays. After all, how can he gloat about being thrashed and throttled at his own game?

How can he brag about his quarterback getting popped to a pulp? How can he pump up Mark Sanchez and talk about how he’s joined the ranks of “elite’’ quarterbacks when Sanchez is either being battered or giving up the football?

And if you’re Ryan, if you can’t brag or boast, if you can’t back up your continued predictions of a Super Bowl championship, what else is there to do?

What’s left?

That’s right. Instead of praising to the hilt, you go postal. You yell at your woeful offense until the cows come home. You go ballistic on a young line that lost some key veterans and doesn’t have injured Pro Bowl center Nick Mangold to help right the ship. You scream at Sanchez for not making the third-year leap.

But why did Rex lose it now? At this very juncture of the season?

Because the Patriots are on tap. And further embarrassment is not an option.

This is crisis mode. The Jets are 2-2 and can’t lose this game. Not if Ryan has any prayer of saving face. Not if he wants to avoid having legend Joe Namath scold him again. Not if he expects to finally overtake the 3-1 Patriots and win the division for a change.

But that’s the danger of being cocky and brash, of talking with such bravado. When the wheels start flying off, you tend to look a little foolish. All of Ryan’s vows and promises of greatness, all of his insistence of how his team would win the Super Bowl look ridiculous. That’s the risk you run.

Since taking over the Jets, Ryan has pretty much avoided such land mines. He hasn’t had to do much back-pedaling. He’s done a good job walking the walk. He’s backed up his bold words, for the most part.

And he’s taken down the Pats with regularity, including last season’s playoffs.

The thing he hasn’t done is win the championship.

But he’s in a bit of a pickle here. He comes to Foxboro as a 91â„2-point underdog. A team that’s known for a ground-and-pound attack can’t run the football. A team that’s known for stopping the run hasn’t been able to shut down anyone. Darren McFadden, whom the Pats kept at bay, ran circles around the Jets.

Ryan’s insistence on letting Sanchez do more to help the team win games, incorporating more of a passing attack, backfired tremendously. Santonio Holmes even called out both Sanchez and the offensive line, to no avail.

Now Ryan comes in with a battered and beaten team that may have a tough time getting up off the mat after two extremely physical games. And he reportedly told the team Monday in a hail of F-bombs he wants to go back to the ground-and-pound offense. He wants to run the ball against the Patriots, even if they have the worst passing defense in the league.

Maybe that’s how much faith, or lack of such, he has in Sanchez and that beleaguered offensive line. Sanchez, the 15th-ranked quarterback in the league, has been sacked 11 times. He has a 75.9 passer rating. He hasn’t gotten the ball to stars Holmes and Plaxico Burress.